JAMB Government common mistakes
JAMB Government · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Spending the comprehension passage's time budget on the passage itself, then guessing the five questions from memory without returning to the lines that support each answer.
Candidates treat the passage as a reading test and read it once passively; under time pressure they answer from general impression, so options that are true in real life but not stated in the passage get chosen.
What to do instead
Read the questions first, then read the passage with a pencil marking the sentence that answers each question. For every option, ask 'which line proves this?' - if no line proves it, eliminate it. Practise two passages per sitting with a strict 12-minute cap so the look-back habit becomes automatic.
Choosing the option that 'sounds most educated' on synonym/antonym and sentence-completion items instead of testing the word in the sentence's grammatical and collocational slot.
Rare vocabulary in distractors creates a prestige bias, and candidates have often memorised word lists without collocations, so they cannot tell that 'make a decision' is right and 'do a decision' is wrong.
What to do instead
Substitute each option into the sentence and read it aloud mentally, checking both meaning and the preposition or verb pattern that follows. Keep a personal log of word + preposition pairs (comply with, consist of, prefer X to Y) rather than isolated word lists.
Applying the wrong concord rule in 'one of the + plural noun + who/that' and collective-noun sentences, e.g. picking 'is' because the nearest noun is plural.
Candidates match the verb to the closest noun rather than to the true subject, and Nigerian English usage in everyday speech often tolerates forms the exam marks wrong.
What to do instead
Before choosing, bracket the subject and cross out prepositional phrases: 'One of the students [who were absent] is here.' Drill the fixed patterns - 'one of the boys who were', 'each of them is', 'the committee has/have' depending on whether it acts as a unit - and mark the subject in the question paper every time.
Answering questions on the 1999 Constitution, federal character, or separation of powers from general impressions of how government 'should' work rather than from the constitutional text.
Government is studied through headlines and personal opinion in many schools; candidates never distinguish the exclusive legislative list from the concurrent list, or a convention from an entrenched provision.
What to do instead
Build a one-page table per topic: exclusive list (defence, currency, foreign affairs), concurrent list (education, health), residual (traditional rulers). For each arm of government, write its constitutional check on the others with the section number. Revise from the constitution's own headings, not from commentary alone.
Confusing the pre-independence constitutional sequence - Clifford (1922), Richards (1946), Macpherson (1951), Lyttleton (1954) - and what each introduced, such as the elective principle or regionalism.
The constitutions share features (nominated members, unofficial majority) and candidates memorise names without the one distinguishing innovation that examiners test.
What to do instead
Create a timeline with one decisive fact per constitution: Clifford introduced the elective principle in Lagos and Calabar; Richards first created regional houses and was rejected by the nationalists; Macpherson introduced ministerial responsibility; Lyttleton established federalism with a federal prime minister. Attach the nationalist reaction to each, since questions often ask why it was criticised.
Naming an institution without knowing its actual function - for example, saying the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) conducts elections, or that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) registers political parties and also adjudicates electoral disputes.
Acronyms are learned as a list of 'agencies that fight corruption or run elections' without the specific mandate, so any plausible-sounding pairing looks correct.
What to do instead
For each body write mandate, establishing instrument, and one thing it cannot do: INEC conducts elections and registers voters; election petitions go to the tribunals and courts, not INEC; EFCC investigates financial crimes; ICPC handles public-sector corruption. Test yourself by writing the 'cannot do' line, which is where distractors live.
Mixing up demand-side and supply-side determinants, or treating a price change as a shift of the curve rather than a movement along it.
Textbook definitions are memorised as lists without the graphical distinction, and candidates have not internalised that only non-price factors shift demand or supply.
What to do instead
Before answering, ask: 'Is price itself changing?' If yes, it is movement along the curve; if a non-price factor (income, taste, technology, cost of inputs) changes, the curve shifts. Draw the shift arrow in the margin for every such question, and label the new equilibrium price and quantity direction.
Confusing the functions of money with its qualities, or defining inflation, deflation, and recession interchangeably in objective items.
The terms are taught in the same chapter and share vocabulary ('medium', 'store', 'general rise'), so recall collapses under exam pressure.
What to do instead
Use a two-column contrast sheet: functions (medium of exchange, store of value, unit of account, standard of deferred payment) versus qualities (durability, portability, divisibility, acceptability, scarcity). For macro terms, attach a one-line numeric cue: inflation = sustained rise in the general price level, deflation = sustained fall, recession = two consecutive quarters of falling output.
Leaving objective items blank when there is no negative marking, or spending minutes on one hard calculation and losing four easy questions at the end.
Fear of a wrong answer and perfectionism; candidates also work strictly in order instead of in passes.
What to do instead
Adopt a three-pass method: first pass answer everything you know in under a minute each; second pass handle the rest by elimination; third pass transfer answers and check numbering. Never leave a blank - a reasoned elimination is worth more than an empty box. Practise with a timer to make the passes habitual.
Misreading the question's command word - answering 'which of the following is NOT' as if it said 'is', or giving a list where the question asks for the most important factor.
Under speed, the eye skips small words like NOT, EXCEPT, and MOST, and candidates answer the question they expected rather than the one printed.
What to do instead
Circle the command word and any negative in every stem before looking at the options, then restate the stem in your own words in the margin. For 'NOT/EXCEPT' items, tick the three true options and choose the remaining one. This single habit typically recovers several marks per paper.